The Residue Series: Everyday Accumulation, 2008

This series continues Torke’s interest in the resonance of everyday life. Part Petri dish, part performance, part sculpture—this work is an examination of accumulation: of the traces of presence, of the mark making of everyday life.

In daily domestic performances at specific sites, the focus is on that which we normally cast-off, disavow or destroy. The dialectic between entropy and order is in constant play. The debris that accumulates is collected over the course of one month. Afterwards, it is cast into solid clear resin forms.

Urn-like forms filled with the detritus of daily movement. Stovetops embedded with the spew from cooking. Resin copies of rocks from the garden cast with the casts-off of passers-by. All are meant to provoke a tension between what's ugly or beautiful, while exploring how we value what is around us and why we fear change.